Dinosaur National Monument

Long after the dinosaurs, the Fremont people lived along these rivers roughly a thousand years ago, farming the bottomlands and hunting the uplands. They left behind striking rock art pecked and painted on the canyon walls, including broad-shouldered human figures, bighorn sheep, and abstract designs that can still be seen along the monument's roads and trails.

The Ute people have long held this country as part of their homeland, and their descendants remain in the region today. Homesteaders arrived in the late 1800s, and one, Josie Bassett Morris, ran a small ranch in a hidden box canyon within the monument for decades, her cabin still standing. The dinosaur bones were discovered in 1909 by paleontologist Earl Douglass, and the site was protected as a national monument soon after, later expanded to take in the river canyons.

The fossil wall records a moment from the Jurassic period, when this was a warm floodplain crossed by rivers. Dinosaurs that died were washed into a sandbar in a river channel, where their bones piled up and were buried in sand. Over ages the sand hardened into stone, the whole region was buried, uplifted, and tilted, and erosion finally exposed the fossil-rich layer at the surface.

Rather than removing every bone, the National Park Service chose to leave a great section of the quarry wall in place, so visitors can see the bones as they were found, tangled together in the rock. The fossils include long-necked giants like Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, plated Stegosaurus, and the fierce predator Allosaurus, a snapshot of an entire lost world preserved in a single cliff.

Beyond the quarry, the monument is defined by two rivers. The Green River, flowing down from Wyoming, and the Yampa, one of the last major wild rivers in the West with a nearly natural flow, join within the monument and cut spectacular canyons through the uplifted rock. Rafting trips through canyons like Lodore and Split Mountain are legendary among river runners for their whitewater and remote beauty.

For those staying on land, scenic drives climb to overlooks like Harpers Corner, gazing down thousands of feet into the canyon country and the confluence of the rivers. Roads and trails lead to petroglyph panels, homestead sites, and quiet canyon bottoms, revealing a landscape as rich in scenery as it is in fossils.

The monument's mix of river, desert, and mountain supports abundant wildlife. Bighorn sheep pick across the cliffs, mule deer and pronghorn range the flats, and beavers, river otters, and great blue herons work the riverbanks, while golden eagles and peregrine falcons hunt the canyons. Dinosaur is also a certified dark-sky park, and its remote skies blaze with stars at night.

Spring and fall bring mild weather ideal for hiking, scenic drives, and river trips, when the rivers run high with snowmelt. Summer is hot in the desert canyons, though the high country stays cooler, and river running peaks in the warmer months. Winter is cold and quiet, with snow on the uplands and few visitors, leaving the fossil wall and canyons to those willing to brave the chill.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.